La contemplación de Dios en la tradición cristiana: visión sintética

Abstract

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As the title of the article states, the author aspires to offer a synthesized vision of the doctrine on contemplation throughout Christian tradition. In order to do so, and as a point of reference, he analyses the statements of Greek thinking, which allows him to make the specificity and peculiarity of Bible teaching clear. Then he follows a chronological scheme. He analyses Patristic doctrine, briefly, but takes into account both the representatives of cataphatic mysticism or that of the light, and those who represent apophatic mysticism or that of darkness. Within the context of a panorama of the Medieval and Modern eras as a whole, the outstanding figures are Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Towards the end of the exposé, he pays particular attention to the early 20th century debates on the question of mysticism, as well as the later change of direction, which he characterizes as the transformation from the attention paid to the predominantly subjective aspects of Christian experience to determined attention to the objective and theological aspects of the experience.

Keywords

Contemplation, History of spirituality, Question of mysticism.